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Western lowland gorilla facts for kids12/27/2023 Population genetics of the lowland gorillas suggest that the western and eastern lowland populations diverged ~261 thousand years ago. Some variations that distinguish the classifications of gorilla include varying density, size, hair colour, length, culture, and facial widths. The proposed third subspecies of Gorilla beringei, which has not yet received a trinomen, is the Bwindi population of the mountain gorilla, sometimes called the Bwindi gorilla. The species and subspecies listed here are the ones upon which most scientists agree. Primatologists continue to explore the relationships between various gorilla populations. The separate species and subspecies developed from a single type of gorilla during the Ice Age, when their forest habitats shrank and became isolated from each other. More recently, a third subspecies has been claimed to exist in one of the species. There is now agreement that there are two species, each with two subspecies. Until recently, gorillas were considered to be a single species, with three subspecies: the western lowland gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla and the mountain gorilla. Human gene sequences differ only 1.6% on average from the sequences of corresponding gorilla genes, but there is further difference in how many copies each gene has. The closest relatives of gorillas are the other two Homininae genera, chimpanzees and humans, all of them having diverged from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. The name was derived from Ancient Greek Γόριλλαι (gorillai), meaning 'tribe of hairy women', described by Hanno. The American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman first described the western gorilla (they called it Troglodytes gorilla) in 1847 from specimens obtained in Liberia. Lowland gorillas live in dense forests and lowland swamps and marshes as low as sea level, with western lowland gorillas living in Central West African countries and eastern lowland gorillas living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo near its border with Rwanda. The mountain gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2,200–4,300 metres (7,200–14,100 ft). Although their range covers a small percentage of Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. Gorillas' natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forests in Sub-Saharan Africa. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 95–99% depending on what is counted, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the chimpanzees and bonobos. The genus Gorilla is divided into two species: the eastern gorillas and the western gorillas (both critically endangered), and either four or five subspecies. Gorillas are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Sub-Saharan Africa. Sexual dimorphism of the skull: adult male left, female right
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